10 Best Graphics Cards for Mining Cryptocurrencies

Cryptocurrencies are all around news these days. It is a digital currency in which encryption techniques are used to regulate the generation of units of currency and verify the transfer of funds. Call it as a bubble, new money or fraud, the popularity of digital currency does not seem to be ending. The demand is such that even college students are now more interested in searching bitcoins’ value than preparing for AP EAMCET 2018 Exam. Might be it’s because of an exponential increase in the value of cryptocurrencies day by day though it keeps fluctuating. The highest price of 1 bitcoin for the year 2010 was just $0.39, and now the value of that same bitcoin is $11304.33 as of today. Apart from bitcoin number of alternatives to bitcoin are available in the market these days. Most popular are Ethereum, Ripple, Bitcoin Cash, Cardano, Litecoin and so on.

This is the year 2018 and cryptocurrencies have become a global phenomenon known to most people. So, everyone wants to join and win in this game of becoming rich by investing in them or mining them. But as of today, mining, the popular cryptocurrency ‘Bitcoin’ is not so good deal for beginning miners who have limited small capital. Today, just 12.5 Bitcoins are released every ten minutes, but the number of miners has increased 10,000%. It was a lot easy to mine then, but now it has been tough. Today, however, the mining niche has become so competitive that you’ll need to use ASIC miners – special computers built strictly for mining Bitcoins. The investment, maintenance costs, and the level of mathematical difficulty of the process do not make it profitable for consumer level hardware. Perhaps it’s better just to buy bitcoins for now.

But for those who are genuinely interested in digital currency, there are alternative digital coins that are easy to mine like Dash, Safecoin, Steam, Litecoin, Peercoin and many more. Perhaps the Professors from Top MBA Colleges in Karnataka might be giving suggestions to their students about mining cryptocurrency.

Cryptocurrency mining is a very resource intensive task, and it requires a lot of processing power from your computer hardware, especially from the graphics card. Therefore, powerful GPU is needed for mining because it needs a lot of computational power that only a GPU can provide for PC users. Graphics card should also be less power consumption because the mining can stress the GPU resulting high power consumption. Moreover, these are some features to consider while choosing the best GPU for mining cryptocurrency.

Hash rate (speed)

Bus Width

Power Consumption

Cooling

Overclocking

So, in this time of cryptocurrency boom, here is the list of 10 best graphics cards for mining cryptocurrencies. These AMD and Nvidia graphics cards have got the very good Hash rate per watt and can be used for Bitcoin Mining, Ethereum Mining, Zcash Mining and other Cryptocurrency Mining processing that requires GPU power.

AMD Radeon RX 470:

This is one of the best budget GPU for altcoin mining or bitcoin mining. It is the predecessor of Radeon RX 570 but almost with the same power as Radeon RX 570. The technical specifications of this graphics cards are; 2,048 Stream Processors, 1206 / 926 MHz Core Clock, 4GB / 8GB GDDR5 Memory, 7000 MHz Memory Clock, 4.9 TFLOPS Performance, 120W max. Power Consumption, and 256-bit Memory Interface. It is best for Ether and Zcash miners.

Pros:

Full HD Performance

Power Efficiency

Cons:

Comparably Pricey

AMD Radeon RX 480

This one is considered best GPU for mining many coins. Radeon RX 480 is the predecessor of Radeon RX 580 but with the same power as Radeon RX 480. The technical specifications of this graphics cards are; 2,304 Stream Processors, 1120/1266 MHz Core Clock, 4GB / 8GB GDDR5 Memory, 8000 MHz Memory Clock, 5.8 TFLOPS Performance, 150W max. Power Consumption, and 256-bit Memory Interface. The flat rate of the graphics card is around 28 Mh/S. That means it requires a comparatively lesser amount of power which makes you able to generate a significant amount of profits when it comes to mining cryptocurrencies on a regular basis. RX 480 will produce approximately 29 MH/s while mining Ethereum.

Pros:

Best performance

High Speed

Cons:

Noisy while under load

AMD Radeon RX 580

This is one of the best priced and high-quality GPU for mining. The technical specifications of this graphics cards are; 2,304 Stream Processors, 1257/1340 MHz Core Clock, 8GB GDDR5 Memory, 8000 MHz Memory Clock, 6.2 TFLOPS Performance, 185W max. Power Consumption, and 256-bit Memory Interface. It’s better to buy RX 580 8GB rather than 4GB. They will give better performance as well as the energy efficiency. And the main thing is RX 580 have more resale value than 480. It is best for Zcash mining and ethereum mining.

Pros:

Best performance

Customizable

Ratio of quality/price is great

Cons:

Cards not compact

Power Hog

AMD RX VEGA 56:

It is one of the best graphics cards for mining purpose. This card is a bit slower than the RX Vega 64, but it also has lower power consumption. The technical specifications of this graphics cards are; 3,584 Stream Processors, 1156 / 1471 MHz Core Clock, 8GB HBM2 Memory, 1.6Gbps Memory Clock, 10.5 TFLOPS Performance, 210W max. Power Consumption, and 2048-bit Memory Interface. For more mining performance, overclock it and use a custom BIOS to unlock the extra cores.

Pros:

Affordable FreeSync compatible monitor

Price competitive

Faster than the GTX 1070

8GB of HBM2 memory should prove useful in the long-term

Cons:

High power draw

Higher heat output

Loud fan

Nvidia Geforce GTX 1050 Ti:

The GTX 1050 Ti is far from the best graphics card out there, especially when compared to the current mid-range AMD Radeon RX cards but that does not mean it a bad deal. The technical specifications of this graphics cards are; 768 CUDA Cores Processors, 1290/ 1392 MHz Core Clock, 4GB GDDR5 Memory, 7 Gbps Memory Clock and 128-bit Memory Interface.

Nvidia Geforce GTX 1070

This one is the best 8GB GPU for mining and based on Pascal GPU Architecture. With Pascal architecture, the GTX 1070 holds 1920 cores – this allows the computer to do computational heavy lifting needed for mining Ethereum and other coins on the market. The technical specifications of this graphics cards are; 1920 CUDA Cores Processors, 1506/1683 MHz Core Clock, 8GB GDDR5 Memory, 8000 MHz Memory Clock, 6.5 TFLOPS Performance, 150W max. Power Consumption, and 256-bit Memory Interface. If you’re looking for a graphics card which you can use in the longer term, this is the perfect fit for you. This is also great for mining Ethereum and other coins on the market.

Pros:

Fantastic overclocking

Super quiet during operation

Power efficient

Cons:

Expensive

Nvidia Geforce GTX 1070 Ti

This is a powerful high-end graphics card which is probably the best cryptocurrency graphics card from Nvidia. Its performance is almost as good as GTX 1080. The technical specifications of this graphic cards are; 2432 CUDA Cores Processors, 1603 / 1683 MHz Core Clock, 8GB GDDR5 Memory, 8000 MHz Memory Clock, 8.1 TFLOPS Performance, 180W max. Power Consumption, and 256-bit Memory Interface.

Pros:

Latest Pascal graphics card from Nvidia

Stable and cool performance

Excellent VR Performance

Cons:

Older GDDR5 memory

Nvidia Geforce GTX 1080:

This is the best choice for those with a 4K capable graphics card. The technical specifications of this graphics cards are; 2560 CUDA Cores Processors, 8GB GDDR5 Memory, 1600 MHz Memory Clock speed, and 180W max. Power Consumption. It is good for mining Zcash but not for Ethereum.

Pros:

Excellent performance

Power efficient

4k VR capabilities

Cons:

Expensive

Fans do not turn off in idle

Nvidia Geforce GTX 1080 Ti

It is an excellent choice for mining. This is a high level and expensive GPU. 1080Ti comes with DDR5x memory instead of DDR5 resulting better mining performance. It also performs well on many algorithms. Regarding hash rates, 1080 Ti produce a significant amount of hash rates compared to other cards. There is a right amount of profit after ROI. The technical specifications of this graphics cards are; 3,584 Stream Processors, 1,480MHz Core Clock, 11GB GDDR5X Memory, 11GHz Memory Clock.

Pros:

Excellent hash rate

Very powerful

Cons:

Expensive

Conclusion:

Every card has own strengths and weaknesses, and thus we should choose which card will be suitable for mining. Depending upon the cryptocurrency you want to mine you can choose the best from given options. For example, Nvidia 1070 and 1070 Ti is the best option for Zcash mining whereas RX Vega card is best for mining Monero.

So please research thoroughly before buying the cards. And who knows maybe it is a bubble or next significant opportunity so, invest according to your risk appetite.